Édouard Manet

Napoleon III’s 1863 authorization of the Salon des Refusés, an exhibition of works rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon exhibiting such sensational works as Edouard Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass (Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe), James McNeill Whistler’s Girl in White, and others by such artists as Camille Pissaro and Paul Cézanne, marks a new era in modern painting.

Many critics and the public ridicule the refusés, but the critical attention also legitimizes the emerging avant-garde painters.

Atlantic West Europe (1864–1875): Industrial Maturity, National Conflicts, and Social Reform

From 1864 to 1875, Atlantic West Europe—including northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and the Atlantic and English Channel coasts—entered a crucial phase marked by sustained industrial maturity, increased national tensions culminating in the Franco-Prussian War, significant urban and social transformations, and the emergence of deeper political divisions driven by class, religion, and nationalism.

Political and Military Developments

The Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871)

• The era’s defining political event was the Franco-Prussian War, triggered in part by France’s ambitions under Napoleon III and manipulated by Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to unify Germany.

• France’s devastating defeat, highlighted by Napoleon III’s capture at the Battle of Sedan (1870), ended the Second French Empire and led to the proclamation of the Third French Republic.

• The humiliating loss and subsequent occupation by Prussian troops, including parts of northern France, profoundly impacted French national identity and political stability.

Emergence of the French Third Republic

• The newly established Third Republic (1870) began navigating internal political instability, social tensions, and lingering monarchist aspirations. Under Adolphe Thiers and later Patrice de MacMahon, the republic struggled to consolidate its institutions and heal national divisions.

Belgium: Stability amid Neutrality and Reform

• Belgium, under King Leopold II (r.1865–1909), continued its policy of neutrality but faced growing internal tensions between liberals and Catholics. Electoral reforms expanded suffrage modestly, setting the stage for future democratization.

• Leopold II began focusing on overseas ambitions in Africa, laying early foundations for Belgian colonialism.

Netherlands and Luxembourg: Liberal Reforms and Stability

• The Netherlands under King William III remained politically stable, with liberal parliamentary forces pushing progressive reforms in education, infrastructure, and public administration.

• Luxembourg, following the Luxembourg Crisis of 1867, was reaffirmed as an independent and perpetually neutral state, ending previous Dutch sovereignty, and entering a new era of political autonomy.

Economic Developments: Industrial Consolidation and Growth

Post-War Economic Resilience in France

• Despite political turmoil, northern French industry rapidly recovered after the Franco-Prussian War. Cities such as Lille, Roubaix, Dunkirk, and Le Havre continued to expand, driven by textiles, steel production, shipbuilding, and railways.

• The Suez Canal’s opening (1869), though geographically distant, enhanced French maritime trade routes, indirectly benefiting Atlantic ports.

Belgian Industrial Strength and Expansion

• Belgium sustained significant industrial growth, particularly in iron, coal, and textiles. Antwerp continued its ascent as a major global trade hub, while Wallonia’s steel and coal production surged, powering broader economic expansion.

Dutch Maritime Commerce and Industrial Diversification

• The Netherlands experienced continued growth in maritime commerce, shipbuilding, and agricultural exports. Rotterdam emerged as a vital port city, increasingly surpassing Amsterdam as the nation’s primary commercial gateway.

• New industrial sectors developed, including chemical manufacturing, textiles, and machinery production, enhancing economic diversification and resilience.

Social Developments: Labor Activism and Urbanization

Labor Movements and the Paris Commune (1871)

• In France, profound social tensions emerged after the Franco-Prussian War, notably culminating in the revolutionary uprising known as the Paris Commune (March–May 1871), reflecting urban working-class dissatisfaction, socialist aspirations, and republican ideals.

• Although brutally suppressed by government forces, the Commune deeply influenced European socialist thought and labor movements, inspiring workers and radical intellectuals across Atlantic West Europe.

Belgian and Dutch Labor Activism

• Belgium experienced significant labor activism, particularly in industrial regions such as Liège, Antwerp, and Ghent, with workers demanding improved working conditions, higher wages, and political representation.

• In the Netherlands, the rise of trade unions and early socialist movements, especially in urban centers such as Rotterdam and Amsterdam, signaled a gradual but increasing demand for social reform.

Cultural and Intellectual Developments

Realism and Naturalism in Literature and Art

• Cultural life remained profoundly shaped by realism and emerging naturalism, notably in France, through writers like Émile Zola, whose works (beginning with Thérèse Raquin, 1867) highlighted the stark realities of industrial urban life and social inequalities.

• Painters such as Édouard Manet and early Impressionists challenged traditional academic art, focusing instead on modern urban experiences and candid portrayals of daily life, reshaping artistic expression throughout Europe.

Advancements in Science and Technology

• Significant advancements occurred in industrial technology, chemistry, medicine, and sanitation. These improvements supported rapid urban growth and increased industrial productivity, notably through innovations in steel production and public health infrastructure.

Religious Developments

Continued Secularization and Religious Conflict

• Secularization intensified, particularly in France, where the Catholic Church's political influence was increasingly challenged by republican governments and secular intellectuals.

• Belgium continued experiencing significant tensions between Catholic conservatives and liberal secularists, particularly over educational reforms and church-state relations, shaping the country's long-term political landscape.

Urbanization and Social Dynamics

Accelerated Urban Growth and Infrastructure

• Urbanization accelerated dramatically, driven by industrial expansion and rural migration. Major cities—Paris, Lille, Roubaix, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Brussels, and Amsterdam—expanded rapidly, investing significantly in urban infrastructure, public transportation, and sanitation systems.

Deepening Class Divisions

• Economic prosperity was unevenly distributed, deepening class divides. Wealthier merchant and industrialist classes thrived, especially in urban centers, while industrial workers faced difficult living conditions and periodic unemployment, fueling labor unrest and demands for reform.

Long-Term Consequences and Historical Significance

The era 1864–1875 represented a crucial phase in Atlantic West Europe’s historical trajectory:

• Politically, the fall of Napoleon III and the establishment of the Third Republic reshaped France’s internal dynamics and European alliances, profoundly influencing subsequent geopolitical alignments.

• Economically, the region demonstrated resilience and sustained industrial maturity, firmly integrating into global trade networks and setting foundations for late 19th-century prosperity.

• Socially, intensified labor activism, epitomized by the Paris Commune, revealed growing class tensions and demands for political and social reforms that would drive subsequent European socialist and democratic movements.

• Culturally, realism and emerging naturalism influenced European literature, art, and intellectual thought, reflecting a deeper engagement with social realities and the complexities of modern industrial life.

By 1875, Atlantic West Europe had emerged from a turbulent decade politically transformed, economically vibrant, socially dynamic, and culturally influential—poised for continued prominence in the rapidly modernizing Europe of the late 19th century.

Edouard Manet's Olympia (1863) is a nude portrayed in a style reminiscent of early studio photographs, but whose pose is based on Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538).

As he had in Luncheon on the Grass (1863), Manet had again paraphrased a respected work by a Renaissance artist.

The painting is also reminiscent of Francisco Goya's painting The Nude Maja (1800).

Manet had embarked on the canvas after being challenged to give the Salon a nude painting to display.

His uniquely frank depiction of a self-assured prostitute is accepted by the Paris Salon in 1865, where it created a scandal.

According to Antonin Proust, "only the precautions taken by the administration prevented the painting being punctured and torn" by offended viewers. (Manet by Gilles Neret (2003; Taschen).

The painting is controversial partly because the nude is wearing some small items of clothing such as an orchid in her hair, a bracelet, a ribbon around her neck, and mule slippers, all of which accentuate her nakedness, sexuality, and comfortable courtesan lifestyle.

The orchid, upswept hair, black cat, and bouquet of flowers are all recognized symbols of sexuality at the time.

This modern Venus' body is thin, counter to prevailing standards; the painting's lack of idealism rankles viewers.

The painting's flatness, inspired by Japanese wood block art, serves to make the nude more human and less voluptuous.

A fully dressed black servant is featured, exploiting the theory, current at this time, that black people are hyper-sexed.

That she is wearing the clothing of a servant to a courtesan here furthers the sexual tension of the piece.

Olympia's body as well as her gaze is unabashedly confrontational.

She defiantly looks out as her servant offers flowers from one of her male suitors.

Although her hand rests on her leg, hiding her pubic area, the reference to traditional female virtue is ironic; a notion of modesty is notoriously absent in this work.

A contemporary critic denounces Olympia's "shamelessly flexed" left hand, which seemed to him a mockery of the relaxed, shielding hand of Titian's Venus. (Hunter, Dianne. Seduction and theory: readings of gender, representation, and rhetoric. University of Illinois Press, 1989. p. 19.)

Likewise, the alert black cat at the foot of the bed strikes a sexually rebellious note in contrast to that of the sleeping dog in Titian's portrayal of the goddess in his Venus of Urbino.

"Olympia" is the subject of caricatures in the popular press, but is championed by the French avant-garde community, and the painting's significance is appreciated by artists such as Gustave Courbet, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, and later Paul Gauguin.

As with Luncheon on the Grass, the painting raises the issue of prostitution within contemporary France and the roles of women within society.

The roughly painted style and photographic lighting in these works is seen as specifically modern, and as a challenge to the Renaissance works Manet copies or uses as source material.

His work is considered 'early modern', partially because of the black outlining of figures, which draws attention to the surface of the picture plane and the material quality of paint.

He becomes friends with the painters—later to be known as Impressionists—Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro through another painter, Berthe Morisot, who is a member of the group and draws him into their activities.

The grand niece of the painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Morisot had had her first painting accepted in the Salon de Paris in 1864, and she will continue to show in the salon for the next ten years.

Degas will exhibit annually in the Salon during the next five years, but he will submit no more history paintings, and his Steeplechase—The Fallen Jockey (Salon of 1866) signals his growing commitment to contemporary subject matter.

The change in his art is influenced primarily by the example of Édouard Manet, whom Degas had met in 1864 (while both were copying the same Velázquez portrait in the Louvre, according to a story that may be apocryphal).

Claude Monet has begun to capture the effects of light reflected from objects and figures.

His Camille or The Woman in the Green Dress (La femme à la robe verte), painted in 1866, had brought him recognition and is one of many works featuring his future wife, Camille Doncieux; she is the model for the figures in Women in the Garden of the following year, and will be also for On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt, 1868.

Camille becomes pregnant and gives birth to their first child, Jean in 1867.

Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840 on the 5th floor of 45 Rue Laffitte, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris.

He is the second son of Claude Adolphe Monet and Louise Justine Aubrée Monet, both of them second-generation Parisians.

On May 20, 1841, he had been baptized in the local parish church, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, as Oscar-Claude, but his parents had called him simply Oscar.

In 1845, his family had moved to Le Havre in Normandy.

His father had wanted him to go into the family grocery business, but Monet had wanted to become an artist.

His mother had been a singer.

On April 1, 1851, Monet had entered Le Havre secondary school of the arts.

Locals knew him well for his charcoal caricatures, which he would sell for ten to twenty francs.

Monet had also undertaken his first drawing lessons from Jacques-François Ochard, a former student of Jacques-Louis David.

On the beaches of Normandy in about 1856/1857, he had met fellow artist Eugène Boudin, who had become his mentor and taught him to use oil paints.

Boudin had taught Monet "en plein air" (outdoor) techniques for painting.

Both had received the influence of the Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind.

On January 28, 1857, his mother had died.

Leaving school at the age of sixteen, he had gone to live with his widowed childless aunt, Marie-Jeanne Lecadre.

In Paris for several years, Monet has met other young painters who will become friends and, later, fellow impressionists; among them is Édouard Manet.

In June 1861, Monet had joined the First Regiment of African Light Cavalry in Algeria for a seven-year commitment, but, two years later, after he had contracted typhoid fever, his aunt had intervened to get him out of the army if he agreed to complete an art course at an art school.

It is possible that Jongkind, whom Monet knew, may have prompted his aunt on this matter.

Disillusioned with the traditional art taught at art schools, in 1862 Monet had become a student of Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he had met Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille and Alfred Sisley.

Together they share new approaches to art, painting the effects of light en plein air with broken color and rapid brushstrokes, in what will later come to be known as Impressionism.

Edgar Degas, dependent for the first time in his life on sales of his artwork for income, will produce much of his greatest work during the decade beginning in 1874.

By now thoroughly disenchanted with the Salon, Degas joins forces with a group of young artists who are intent upon organizing an independent exhibiting society.

Degas’s father had died earlier in the year, and in the subsequent settling of the estate it had been discovered that Degas's brother René has amassed enormous business debts.

To preserve the family name, Degas has been forced to sell his house and a collection of art he had inherited.

Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley, most of whose works have been consistently rejected by the juries of the official Salon of the French Academy (the state-sponsored annual exhibition), decide to hold their own exhibit.

These founding members of the nascent Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs are joined by Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Berthe Morisot, Armand Guillaumin, and Eugène Boudin.

The celebrated photographer Nadar, whose former studio building at 35 boulevard des Capucines has become a local landmark and a favorite meeting place of the intelligentsia of Paris, lends them his gallery.

On April 15, 1874, the nine painters offer their work for public viewing.

The exhibition itself reveals three main trends.

The Parisian circle around Monet and Renoir has developed the evanescent and sketchlike style the furthest.

The vision of those working near Pissarro in Pontoise and Auvers is in general more solid, being firmly rooted in country scenes.

A relatively urbane, genre-like trend is detectable in Degas's picture of Paul Valpinçon and his family at the races called Carriage at the Races (1870-1873; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and Morisot's The Cradle (1873; Louvre, Paris).

Cézanne, modeling himself on Pissarro, sublimates the turbulent emotions of his earlier work in pictures that are studied directly and closely from nature. (He will follow the method for the rest of his life.)

Although some critics appreciate the new painting, most subject the artists to ridicule.

Monet exhibits twelve paintings: his Impression: Sunrise (1872; Musée Marmottan, Paris) prompts the journalist Louis Leroy, writing in the satirical magazine Le Charivari, to dismiss the show as an exhibition of the Impressionist.

Leroy thus unintentionally gives a name to the new artistic movement, as the artists themselves soon adopt the name as descriptive of their intention to accurately convey visual impressions. (The 1874 paintings by these Impressionists will eventually lead to what is now recognized as Modern Art.)

Nadar, a natural showman, is greatly pleased by the storm the exhibit raises; the notoriety is good for business.

The work of Renoir, who has mastered the ability to convey his immediate visual impressions, is a perfect illustration of the Impressionists' new approach in thought and technique.

By using small, multicolored strokes, he evokes the vibration of the atmosphere, the sparkling effect of foliage, and especially the luminosity of a young woman's skin in the outdoors.

The six paintings he exhibits show great vitality, emphasizing the pleasures of life despite the financial worries that trouble him. (Finding himself unable to obtain five hundred francs for his La Loge (The Theater Box, 1874, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London), exhibited at Nadar's, for which his brother and a new model, Nini, had posed, he eventually pressures grumbling Martin pere into paying four hundred and twenty-five for it, the amount he desperately needs for his rent.) (John Rewald, The History of Impressionism, 4th rev. ed. 1973, reprinted 1980)

Cézanne sells one of the two landscapes he shows but arouses derision with a third painting, his Modern Olympia (1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris).